Graduate Student Focuses on More Accurate Fisheries Modeling
Contact: Nick Houtman, 207-581-3777
ORONO, Maine — Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Michael Errigo didn’t have many chances to fish. He tried his luck once at the end of a city pier but didn’t catch a thing. Now, the tide may have turned for the University of Maine Ph.D. student in the School of Marine Sciences (SMS). Errigo has received a three-year fellowship from National Sea Grant and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to work on fisheries population dynamics, the science that underlies much of fishery management and regulation.
Errigo will work with SMS fisheries modeler Yong Chen on a new model that Chen, post-doctoral researcher Minoru Kanaiwa and Carl Wilson of the Maine Department of Marine Resources developed for lobster in the Gulf of Maine. He plans to expand his focus to include cod, herring and other commercial species. Larry Jacobson, adjunct professor at UMaine and a research fishery biologist at the NMFS office in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, will serve as a mentor on Errigo’s project.
Errigo’s proposal received the top ranking for the national fellowship program, says Chen. It addresses the potential management problems that can arise from systematic errors in environmental and fisheries data. Such data are a critical ingredient in models that assess the abundance and condition of fish stocks. Possible biases in the data can affect management plans, fishery quotas and other aspects of fishery regulation.
Sources of error include uncertainties in environmental trends and changing technologies used to monitor the environment and fish harvesting. Errigo will use computer simulation and analyses to understand how these so-called “structured errors” affect the results of fishery assessment models. He will also study data collection, modeling and policy approaches that reduce the risk associated with such errors.
Notice that his proposal was funded was music to Errigo’s ears. “It was really exciting, almost like getting the word that I had received support for coming to UMaine a year earlier,” he says. A graduate of the University of Rochester with a master’s degree from Boston University, Errigo received a Provost Fellowship to come to UMaine in 2004.
It was a summer experience at the University of New Hampshire’s Isle of Shoals marine research station during his undergraduate years that convinced him to pursue a career in marine sciences. “I was the only one who was excited to get up at 4 a.m. and go out into that cold water. I was having a great time,” he laughs.
After receiving his master’s in 2001, Errigo worked at the New England Aquarium in Boston, giving tours and presentations to school children and working on a sustainable fisheries initiative. When he initially considered graduate work in fisheries population assessment, he found that he lacked the background in mathematics and statistics. Prior to coming to UMaine, he spent a year taking math courses at Framingham State College.
Errigo sees computer programming as his biggest personal challenge. While he has become intimately familiar with the thousands of lines of computer code in the Gulf of Maine lobster model, he prefers to be on the front lines of fishery management, “working on applied problems and helping people,” he says. Eventually, he hopes to work in a government agency balancing the health of fish stocks with the needs of the fishing industry.
“I don’t think we should shut fisheries down completely in the name of preserving the stocks. We need to keep in mind the people who make their livings in the industry,” he says.
Errigo plans to complete his degree program in 2008.